As I move further into the tech tree and unlocks, I’ve come to the fun “this is early access and not yet balanced” phase of the game.

Most production games are a balance of collecting enough materials, to feed multiple stages of production, all while having enough power to run the whole thing. You can’t truly full invest in any particular thing, as there’s often an upgrade that negates the model just around the corner. You just keep on plowing through, making adjustments here and there as new material is constructed.

Now, the fun part here is that the majority of the game can be run from a main bus, which allows you to produce a ton of stuff used for building. Do you need 40 boilers? Hell no, but you can have them on the side in a crate and never have to worry about crafting them again. But you’re going to need a crate with 1000 foundation blocks! In that sense, you can have the main bus simply run very long chains of materials alocg a crafting path, and then fork off what you need to create/store/augment the main belts.

An example is Circuit Boards. They are a mid-tier item, crafted from Electronic Components (which likely is item #4 on the belt as it’s early) and Polymer Board (an item crafted from oil, early in tier 3). Crafting Polymer Boards is best done close to where you harvest the oil, then shipping it all towards the main bus. And a quick off-shoot from the bus (the components) allow you to create Circuit Boards and then add those to the bus lanes. Other similar products are Advanced Machinery, Glass, Concrete and so on.

From there are two core challenges. First are in-line upgrades. Basic belts are needed for tier 2 belts, and tier 2 is needed for tier 3. You will unlikely make space for that issue and have to tweak the bus as a result as you unlock more advanced tech. Second is research cores, which require a weird set of materials that are not on the belts. It turns into some belt ninjitsu to get it to work, so the actual base construct of the bus needs to accommodate enough space between the constructs to add extra belts. e.g. build with flexibility in mind. These cores also need the main material per tier, which should provide a decision point. The lack of balanced ratios unfortunately prevents such events, and you’ll just slow down.

Balance in these games is notoriously complex. Production chains are complex, with multiple steps, and there are some core principles that need to be adhered to so that the experience is managed. Your mining operations should be relatively balanced, so that you know the effort required to open a new mine. The last mineral you unlock doesn’t follow this principle – you only need it for 1 thing, and each one of those things requires hundreds of the mineral to produce, but in a chain so complex that you can’t actually refine it in a smaller station. It means that logistically you are transporting time, rather than material.

One final bit here, with a cleaner bus set up, is that there are simply too many things that do the same thing. At my count, there are 5 buildings that use belts & pipes. They are different sizes and used for different end results (which thematically don’t make much sense). A great place to optimize!

Next up, tier 5.